What 200+ restaurants revealed about profit blind spots
Prime-cost pressure
Food and labor now swallow 30–50% of operating costs for most restaurants. Operators are constantly juggling ingredient spikes, wage increases and staff shortages just to keep margins intact.
Over half of restaurants still schedule labor or count inventory manually — wasting hours every week. Most line managers spend up to three hours reconciling systems, time that could be spent serving customers.
Manual work traps
Too many tools, not enough connection. 43% of operators say their systems are only “somewhat integrated,” leading to mismatched data, oversights and errors that eat into already thin margins.
Integration friction
Nearly half of restaurants admit that cost-cutting efforts — like cheaper ingredients, staff hour reductions or portion control — backfired, hurting quality, morale or customer experience.
Trial-and-error cuts
How much profit are you losing to blind spots in your own operation?
Our latest research reveals the hidden costs of manual work, fragmented systems and slow insights — and the changes top-performing operators are making right now to reclaim control.
The big question
say they’d cut food and waste costs if they had better visibility
report limited or partial integrations across their tech stack
still rely on manual data pulls between systems
of operators say they track food costs in real time — but most mean end-of-day or weekly reports
The alarming reality
... say they could act on problems the same day if only they trusted their data. The appetite for speed is there — visibility is what’s missing.
Operators are agile. Their systems aren’t.
The visibility gap
percent
46
say they could act on problems the same day...
The #1 visibility blind spot costing restaurants the most
What separates top performers from those falling behind
Why “real time” tracking is rarely real
The small shifts that recover lost time and wasted dollars
What restaurants really want from their POS in 2026
Download the full report to discover:
Get free access to all findings and actionable insights
This report is provided for informational purposes only and reflects data collected from a survey of 200 U.S.-based small and medium-sized restaurant businesses conducted in June 2025. The views and experiences of individual retailers featured in commentary or quotes are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Global Payments. While every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained herein, Global Payments makes no representations or warranties as to the completeness or accuracy of the data or any conclusions drawn from it. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form without prior written permission from Global Payments.
97
%
50
%
43
%
54
%
Download the report
